Hacking for Designers

1

Alan Turing

and the

Machine of

Thinking

2

Hacking for Designers

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

"The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-

processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine."

- Time Magazine, 1999

Hacking for Designers

3

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

Hacking for Designers

4

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

Turning Machine

He proved that some such machine would be capable of

performing any conceivable mathematical computation if

it were representable as an algorithm.

5

Hacking for Designers

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

Turning Machine

Every algorithm can be expressed in a language for a computer consisting of only five basic instructions:

• move left one location• move right one location• read symbol at current location• print 0 at current location• print 1 at current location

Hacking for Designers

6

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

UniversalTurning Machine

7

Hacking for Designers

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

"von Neumann ... firmly emphasised to me, and to others I am sure, that the fundamental conception is

owing to Turing—insofar as not anticipated by Babbage, Lovelace and others."

- Letter by Stanley Frankel to Brian Randell, 1972

Hacking for Designers

8

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

EDVAC

Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer

Hacking for Designers

9

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

ACETuring produced a detailed design for what was called the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE.)

Hacking for Designers

10

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

Bendix G-15Introduced in 1956, some consider it to be the first personal computer

Hacking for Designers

11

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

TheImitationGame

12

Hacking for Designers

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

EnigmaMachine

13

Hacking for Designers

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

U-Boat

14

Hacking for Designers

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

"You needed exceptional talent, you needed genius at Bletchley and Turing's was that genius."

- Asa Briggs

Hacking for Designers

15

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

September 1939

joined by other mathematicians at Bletchley Park, Turing rapidly developed a new machine (the ‘Bombe’) capable of breaking Enigma messages on an industrial scale.

Bombe

16

Hacking for Designers

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

Could Have Been

Hacking for Designers

17

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

Ex Machina

18

Hacking for Designers

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

?CanaMachineThink

Hacking for Designers

19

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

Artificial Intelligence

In 1950, he published a paper entitled Computing Machinery and Intelligence, in which he explored the notion.

In the paper, Turing suggested that rather than building a program to

simulate the adult mind, it would be better rather to produce a simpler one to simulate a child's mind and

then to subject it to a course of education.

20

Hacking for Designers

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

The idea was that a computer could be said to "think" if a human interrogator could not tell it apart, through conversation, from a human

being.

His Turing test was a significant, characteristically provocative and lasting

contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence, which continues after more than

half a century.

Turing Test

Hacking for Designers

21

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

WhatisComputerScience

?

Hacking for Designers

22

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

Traveling SalesmanProblem

Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route that visits each city exactly once and returns to the origin city?

Hacking for Designers

23

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

WhatisComputerScience

Computational ComplexityComputer Graphics

Programming LanguageHuman-Computer Interaction

Computational BiologyArtificial Intelligence

…

Hacking for Designers

24

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

Since 1966, the Turing Award has been given annually by the Association for Computing

Machinery for technical or theoretical contributions to the computing community.

It is widely considered to be the computing world's highest honor, equivalent to the Nobel

Prize.

Turing Award

Hacking for Designers

25

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

Charles Babbage(December 1791 – October 1871)

Considered by some to be a "father of the computer”, Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs. His varied work in other fields has led him to be described as "pre-eminent" among the many polymaths of his century.

Hacking for Designers

26

Alan Turing and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

Ada Lovelace(December 1815 – November 1852)

Chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognized as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. As a result, she is often regarded as the first computer programmer.

27

Hacking for Designers

Alan Turning and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

World-class Runner

Hacking for Designers

28

Alan Turning and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

The Apple Logo Anecdote

Hacking for Designers

29

Alan Turning and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

"God, we wish it were."

- Steve Jobs

30

Hacking for Designers

Alan Turning and the Machine of ThinkingS0:

- Vint Cerf

“Turing's legacy continues to evolve, astonish, challenge and excite. His insights and fearless

approach to daunting problems set benchmarks for decades to come.”